January 27, 2019 · 3:10 pm

Tamil … with David Shulman

Spoken by eighty million people in South Asia and a diaspora that stretches across the globe, Tamil is one of the great world languages, and one of the few ancient languages that survives as a mother tongue for so many speakers. David Shulman presents a comprehensive cultural history of Tamil—language, literature, and civilization—emphasizing how Tamil speakers and poets have understood the unique features of their language over its long history. Impetuous, musical, whimsical, in constant flux, Tamil is a living entity, and this is its biography.

Tamil: A Biography, The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 2016

HARDCOVER , $35.00 • £25.00 • €31.50  …………….ISBN 9780674059924

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January 27, 2019 · 2:29 pm

Prejudiced and Infantile Readings of Sri Lanka at Chatham House in 2019

Introductory Note from Michael Roberts

 The public event organised by Chatham House to discuss recent events in Sri Lanka on 17th January was chaired by a University Lecturer at University College London whose specialty is “human rights,” rather than any one of the Sri Lankan specialists teaching at British Universities (for e.g. Rajesh Venugopal, Asanga Welikala, Sujit Suvisundaram, Zoltan Beidermann and Alan Strathern).  The combination of ignorance, distortion and prejudice that guided the organisation and direction of the debate was exposed in the opening lines of this Chairperson, one Kate Cronin-Furman. “[We are meeting today some ten years after the “final push” of the Sri Lankan Army in a war that ended in May 2009 – “a final phase where the UN estimates said that more than 40,000 civilians were killed by that military [action].”

aaa -kate cronin

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January 27, 2019 · 9:12 am

The Divided Island debated by Chatham House in London, 17th January 2018

Chatham House Public Notice: “A Divided Island: Sri Lanka’s Constitutional Crisis” … 17 January 2019  1:00pm to 2:00pm ……………….Chatham House | 10 St James’s Square | London | SW1Y 4LE ….. NB: “Chatham House” is The Royal Institute of International Affairs

Overview: …… A decade since the end of Sri Lanka’s 25-year civil war, the country has recently been plunged back into turmoil. A constitutional crisis created by the sacking of Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe by President Maithripala Sirisena, and a plan to replace him with former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, paralysed the country’s legislative and executive branches as both Wickramasinghe and Rajapaksa claimed the office of prime minister. Against this background, the panel considers how Sri Lanka’s opaque domestic politics is reflected by the government’s slow progress toward its pledges to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to address accountability and political reconciliation emerging from the country’s 26-year civil war. Looking forward, will Wickramasinghe pursue reconciliation, and accountability for past abuses? And what will Rajapaksa’s disputed return to frontline politics mean for a nation still reconciling the violence of its recent history?

LONDON, UK – Apr 19, 2017: Metropolitan police officers on duty at 10 St James’s Square The Royal Institute of International Affairs Chatham House

 

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January 27, 2019 · 2:48 am

Creeping Imperialism in Sri Lanka via Neoliberal Impositions and the UNHRC

Tamara Kunanayakam: “Introduction” to her academic article “Neoliberalism versus Sovereignty: The Case of Sri Lanka” in Sri Lanka Journal of Economic Research, Volume 6(1,) November 2018, pp.125-146…. [without the footnotes … and with underlining imposed]

A fundamental principle of international law, incorporated in a wide range of international and regional instruments, is permanent sovereignty over the nation’s wealth and resources and all its economic activities as a basic constituent of the right of peoples to self-determination and its corollary, the duty of States to respect sovereign equality in their relations with other States. It is a recognition that there can be no political independence without economic, social and cultural independence, “free from all forms of interference or pressure, direct or indirect, of whatever sort and under whatever pretext.” For independence to be complete, any future attempt to restore foreign influence or domination must be prevented forever.

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January 27, 2019 · 2:20 am

A Rajapaksa Cloud looming over Lanka’s Democracy

Sam Samarasinghe aka SWR de A Samarasinghe of Tulane University, in Sunday Observer, 27 January 2019, where the title is “Gotabaya’s alternative vision challenges Sri Lanka’s democracy” …. with highlighting emphases in different colurs imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

Gotabaya Rajapaksa recently announced at a meeting of Viyath Maga, of which he is president that he was ready to contest the next Presidential Election that must be held this year.In his speech to the assembled professionals and business people he asserted that Sri Lanka must have national unity (jaathikathwaya) and rejected sectarian division (jaathiwaadaya). The Viyath Maga website makes all the right statements on good governance such as “steer the country in the correct path with accountability; inculcate democratic values…”, and so on. Rajapaksa also stressed the importance of solving ‘social problems’ focusing on poverty reduction. All of the above are desirable political goals for the country. They are also not new. The UNF in 2015, and earlier leaders, made similar promises that were largely ignored once in office.

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January 26, 2019 · 7:07 am

Requiem at Trinity College Chapel with Errol Fernando

I  was introduced to a mild mannered visitor to the Chapel by a school officer when I came in for choir practices today. I was told his surname and that he is an old boy. The visitor started by saying “If I were offered a ticket to go to a place that I loved, it would not be any other place in the world but the Trinity College Chapel. ”

He soon go on talking about the choir and went on to describe the carol service in his days. Then he asked “Do the boys know ‘Where River Lake and Mountain Meet’, and would they sing it if I played it for them?” In reply I asked another question: “May I know your first name sir”?

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January 24, 2019 · 8:51 am

Jim Corbett National Park in Northern India

Jim Corbett National Park, India ….

Known as Hailey National Park when it was first established in 1936, this nature reserve in northern India was renamed in honour of Jim Corbett. A British hunter who felled many Bengal tigers and leopards in India in the early 20th century, Corbett later became a wildlife conservationist. He worked to establish the country’s first national park as a place of protection for its dwindling number of big cats and other endangered species. Today the park covers more than 200 square miles full of dense forests, grasslands, rivers, lakes and naturally, wildlife both great and small

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January 23, 2019 · 2:29 pm

Shavendra Silva becomes Chief of Staff, Sri Lankan Army

News Item in Island, 12 January 2019, ….

Major General Shavendra Silva on Thursday assumed office as the 53rd Chief of Staff of the Army during a simple ceremony at Army Headquarters, amidst religious observances. In the backdrop of chanting by the Maha Sangha to invoke blessings on the new office, he placed his signature on an official document to signify the assumption of duties.

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January 22, 2019 · 6:06 am

The Presidential Stakes in the Near Future in Sri Lanka

Sanjana Hattotuwa, Sunday Island, 20 January 2019 where the title is “Puppets, Pawns and Presidents”

Sirisena, Wickremesinghe, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, his brother Chamal and Karu Jayasuriya. The last week saw media frame prospective candidates for an office that the incumbent said, nay, swore on 9th January 2015, he would never seek re-election to and would be the last to occupy. Evidence of Sri Lanka’s sickeningly bankrupt political culture is again to be found in how, leaving aside unequivocal promises four years ago, even the catastrophic events of late 2018 and its entrenchment have not resulted in any meaningful measures to abolish the Executive Presidency. While the government continues bizarrely, blindly and blithely with business as usual, the names paraded as Presidential aspirants offer some interesting insights.

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January 21, 2019 · 1:24 pm

“Both the Cricketing and Political Dispensations in Sri Lanka are in Deep Shit” says Gideon Haigh

Gideon Haigh, in The Weekend Australian, 19-20 January 2019, where the title is  “Crisis of cricket and democracy in Sri Lanka”

In Shehan Karunatilaka’s kaleidoscopic novel of Sri Lanka and cricket, Chinaman, the narrator stops to consider whether the game is so nationally useful at all. “Does Sri Lanka need more schoolteachers, more soldiers or more wicketkeepers?’’ he asks. “A middle-order batsman or a bank manager? A specialist gully fieldsman or a civil engineer?’’ Needless to say, he resolves the conundrum favourably to the game. “Left-arm spinners cannot unclog your drains, teach your children or cure you of disease,” he concludes. “But once in a while, the very best of them will bowl a ball that will bring an entire nation to its feet. And while there may be no practical use in that, there is ­almost certainly value.”

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